China's changing energy intensity trend: A decomposition analysis
Abstract
China experienced a dramatic decline in energy intensity from the onset of economic reform in the late 1970s until 2000, but since then the rate of decline slowed and energy intensity actually increased in 2003. Most previous studies found that most of the decline was due to technological change, but disagreed on the role of structural change. To the best of our knowledge, no decomposition study has investigated the role of inter-fuel substitution in the decline in energy intensity or the causes of the rise in energy intensity since 2000. In this paper, we use logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) techniques to decompose changes in energy intensity in the period 1980-2003. We find that: (1) technological change is confirmed as the dominant contributor to the decline in energy intensity; (2) structural change at the industry and sector (sub-industry) level actually increased energy intensity over the period of 1980-2003, although the structural change at the industry level was very different in the 1980s and in the post-1990 period; (3) structural change involving shifts of production between sub-sectors, however, decreased overall energy intensity; (4) the increase in energy intensity since 2000 is explained by negative technological progress; (5) inter-fuel substitution is found to contribute little to the changes in energy intensity.Download Info
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Bibliographic Info
Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Energy Economics.
Volume (Year): 30 (2008)
Issue (Month): 3 (May)
Pages: 1037-1053
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Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eneco
Related research
Keywords:Other versions of this item:
- Chunbo Ma & David I. Stern, 2006. "China's Changing Energy Intensity Trend: A Decomposition Analysis," Rensselaer Working Papers in Economics 0615, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Department of Economics.
- Q43 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Energy and the Macroeconomy
References
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- Fisher-Vanden, Karen & Jefferson, Gary H. & Liu, Hongmei & Tao, Quan, 2004. "What is driving China's decline in energy intensity?," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 77-97, March.
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Citations
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